UN: Thousands of Somalis are fleeing to Yemen

[July 28, 2009]  MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Thousands of Somalis are preparing to cross the Gulf of Aden to Yemen after fleeing fighting around the capital of Mogadishu, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

The exodus comes as the country's beleaguered president prepared for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton next week.

The UNHCR said nearly a quarter of a million Somalis had fled their homes since May 7, when newly unified Islamist insurgents launched a concerted attack on the capital. The U.S. State Department says some of the insurgent leaders have links to al-Qaida.

Up to 12,000 civilians have taken shelter in the northern Somali town of Bossasso, the base where smugglers take them across the perilous waters of the Gulf to Yemen, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in Geneva.

Thirty-thousand Somalis have already made the crossing this year but more than 300 people have died or gone missing in the process. Drownings, shootings and deaths from hunger or dehydration are common.

Redmond's comments come a day after the Somali parliament held its first meeting since May in war-ravaged Mogadishu. Analysts said it showed that the U.N.-backed government was confident enough of holding key military positions in the city to focus on issues of government.

"For the past two months all the government's attention was focused on fighting," said Mohamud Nor Ahmed, a lecturer at Mogadishu University. "Last week the prime minister ... named a security minister, and now parliament has met, I can say the are refocusing on their internal affairs rather than the endless war."

Clinton and Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed meet next week in Nairobi, Kenya -- a site chosen for security reasons. They are expected to discuss Somalia's rising piracy and possible links between al-Qaida and Somali insurgents.

The current government holds only a few blocks of Mogadishu, with support from African Union peacekeepers and shipments of weapons from countries including the United States. But the government still controls the port, the airport and key government buildings, territory the Islamists have tried desperately to wrest away.

Fighting continued Monday south of the city, but Speaker Sheik Aden Mohamed Nor said Parliament would not tolerate insecurity as an excuse for absence. He sacked five out of the 550 legislators for absences without a reason and for publicly criticizing the government.

Other absent lawmakers had valid reasons, he said, and parliament reached its two-thirds quorum.

The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning government since clan leaders overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991 then turned on each other. Since then, clan rivalry has been complicated by sectarian tensions, the emergence of strong criminal gangs and the involvement of other countries.

[Associated Press]

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